ONE FOR PUMA PERL

I will try
to turn
a few more
lights on
& not sit
& stew
in so much
darkness.
It gets
so comfortable
in the asshole
of self
that you can't smell
your own shit--
& even if you do
you kinda like it
until an old friend
you respect
tugs on your jacket:
hey, it stinks
in here;
light a match
willya?

Onward.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOG

I can get
pretty lost
with only myself
for company.
My secrets need
distractions.
Recently
I've had time
to go insane.
Getting there
has been fun.
Remaining there
has been hell.
Give me
your number.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

ON A NYC STOOP ON THIS DAY OF ATONEMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csE28cJxxNE
For Samira

Had we met
forty years ago
we'd have had
a grand time
setting each other
on fire.
It would have been lovely
to be both ignitor
& charred; pyromaniacs
of the soul; LaVern Baker's
Angel Heart.

Your eyes belied
the lust your body struggles
to contain. Brown & burning
they see too much & try
to offer so little, but
they fail to protect
or to serve you well.

We're trapped
in our own time
& by our own sense
of morality
while cowboys ride
faraway fences
& Aretha Franklin
moans in the dark.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

BEING ALIVE

at sixty-nine
makes as much sense
as a deaf & dumb
ventriloquist,
a fountain hidden
in a urinal,
a virgin
giving her lover
skid chains;
a circus
of syringes,
earthworms
who get up
& beg; waves
cresting beneath
the skin.

Sense
& nonsense,
everything
& nothing.
I've been
a heedless
& sometimes headless
man, attuned to only
my heart's trumpet.

Like tonight:
a good-natured whore
helped me bridge
consciousness.
She promoted this semicolon
of calm
that allowed this poem
to write itself
before I test my blood
& take a shot for Hagan-Daz.

Seventy awaits.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND FANTASIZE A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

De Palma
in his glory:
Cassavetes combusting,
Spacek going fucking crazy.
My booming generation:
mirrors & illusions
naked and puffed up
imploding, gasping & holding on
for dear life.
Don't waste your piss,
let them burn.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

NYC WOMEN ARE CUT

by mongrel tailors
& stitched into a
forgiving city
fabric. They have
a hunting eye,
a disinterested sheath.
Their pubic hair stronger
than the cables that hold
up The Brooklyn Bridge.
Paris has it,
Rome has it,
in parts, we
have gowns & red canvas
hightops, syncopation
& sycophants, red hair,
and green hair, and purple,
and blue; no hair & bristles;
a Gershwin sycophants,
a black and white romance
next to a Sid & Nancy
blood splotched Chelsea bed.
Donegal tweeds & Irish weaves,
Jewish prayers & Baptist hollers,
lipstick and scars and ankles
twisting inside knee socks
of high school starlets;
they marry Freud & Lacan,
fashion & tease into passion
& play.
This goddamn be-bop do-wop city
birthed The Drifters & The Voice,
brought Ginsberg into Whitman's grave, gave Dylan
refuge, laid down the line for Crane,
tripped Pollock into paint, bought Dizzy a horn,
gave every faggot with rhythm and style and form
a form to fit it around and places to drink & find release,
gave black folks a country within a country and fomented alchemy secretive;
this city drips into you;
this city lets you be beautiful and brilliant and, finally, insecure.
This is Robert Johnson's crossroads;
this is where the devil makes deals;
this is the old Murderer's Row;
these are the skyscrapers taking your eyes off the streets;
this is danger,
this is delicious;
there is the hoop
and the ball
does not lie.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016

SAW ARBUS

For A's POV:

yesterday;
she was hanging
my spine
on a hook.
That was after
I had an espresso
with Frank
who had to split
for the Hampton Jitney
to meet an old friend,
(he told me),
that he was trying
to pawn-off
on someone
who never met him.
Such fuss.
A mess,
he said.
I just wanted
to get away
from Diane
who kept sliding
her hands
up & down
a mirror
that looked dead
in a fast approaching
storm whipping around
the beach almost
deserted almost
habitable.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2016